Jachut

Its harder to get a to go box (or doggy bag as we call them) in Australia, its actually against health regulations, but sometimes the restaurant will do it. What I do when I go out to eat - which applies more so now that I have no fill than when I had good restriction - first off, I never order something I know will be huge, yummy and very hard to leave on the plate. Just. Dont. Order. It. I stick with the entree menu or size (which I think for you guys is an appetiser) rather than the main meal in anything that resembles a pub, bistro or smorgasbord because "pub grub" is huge, stodgy and megacalorific. I would never ever for example order a chicken parmigiana - I know it will be as large as a dinner plate, come with a heap of chips and I will have great trouble stopping. I've learned to stay away from the bread, many's the time when I had restriction that I'd give in and have a nibble on the garlic bread that the rest of the table had ordered, a sip of wine or two and then bam, stuck and even though I've never actually pb'd in that sort of situation,its really annoying and embarrassing to then be unable to eat even a bite of your nice meal that you paid a lot of money for. Again, Just. Dont. Eat. It. But finally, for me anyway, going out for dinner or lunch is a treat, I dont do it more than once or twice a month. food is to be enjoyed, and shared in social situations as well as being just fuel and it is actually OK to let your hair down (in a controlled manner) occasionally. We all know that caesar salads for example are hugely fattening, but I darn well love em and I'm going to have one if I feel like it. I try to keep the wine to a minimum, I like a nice wine, but more than a glass and my eating control tends to go out the window. For long afternoon barbecues and such when I can start out good and then hit the cheese platter in a disastrous way hours later, I ban myself from drinking alcohol at all.

Ugh, bananas - IMPOSSIBLE for me to eat with any fill. I could eat an apple with the skin more easily than a banana. There is no rhyme nor reason to what our bands will tolerate. I couldnt eat easily bananas, yogurt, ice cream, juice, milk, but I could easily eat bread, steak, raw carrot and salads.

I copped this a lot, and the fact is, if you dont do something, you probably WILL die of an obesity related cause. It is a serious disease and this is a way to fix it. It is NO different to surgery for any other disease and arguably a lot more necessary than surgery to fix something like a hernia which is not currently causing problems. YOu fix the hernia because of the possibility of strangulation, well the possibilty of an obesity related health disaster is at least as likely if not more so.

Lol, I've found bowel resections and then subsequent hospitalisations for bowel obstructions and dehydration work pretty darn well too! Add in some chemo and the weight even stays lost, hehehe.

You have restriction, you just have to learn how to use it. YOu shouldnt be looking for "full", you should be aiming towards "not hungry". If you eat a small portion and you're "not hungry" for several hours then restriction is working for you. Its not sometihng you can actually "feel" in the sense that you're meaning. If you're vomiting, but not overfilled, then its user error - you're either eating too fast, eating too much, eating something that doesnt agree with your band or all three. If you're overfilled then you'll be vomiting very often, and probably resorting to soft, slider foods to get any nourishment in. It would be nice if the band worked like this : - you eat with no trouble and you feel nice and full quickly and you never vomit, but really, it usually doesnt. It works more like this: You serve small portion of healthy food, eat it slowly and carefully, stop when you're not hungry but before you feel really full and then you use your brains, willpower, distraction techniques, whatever to not eat when you dont need to in between meals. You may be able to eat more than you think you should, but its up to you not to do that.

Good for you - I might add, when I say exercise, I run for an 45 minutes to an hour a day. I dont have time for the gym and such but I can always find an hour to head out the front door. I sometimes dont exercise on Saturdays because they're so busy with the kids.

I dont have any forbidden foods, I would just eat what was served, in small portions. Just because someone puts it on your plate, doesnt mean you have to eat it all. Generally speaking, a small plate of food three times a day, no matter what's on it, is not going to make you fat. You'd be hard pressed to fit more than 600 calories on a small plate and even if you dont lose for a couple of days, its not going to be thousands and thousands of calories too much. Snacking and seconds and huge portions are what make people fat. You still have to live in the real world with a band and to me, that doesnt mean stressing over the odd meal you cant control.

To me it means it helps with portion control - so I can feel satisfied on smaller portions. it doesnt make food choices, prevent me from eating things like bread, rice or Pasta, necessitate me sticking to ridiculously small portions (like half a cup, who on earth can be nourished on half a cup of food), prevent me eating between meals and it doesnt make me exercise. Make no mistake, losing weight with a lapband is work, just like dieting without one is. I fell off the wagon regularly but the portion control and slow eating that it provides meant that bad choices werent TOO bad. I couldnt eat a whole cake in a month of Sundays for example, but i can cheat with one or two pieces. In the time that it would take me to eat two pieces of cake, previously i could have done a lot more damage before I caught myself. Over time, it has trained my brain, my eyes and my body to reconsider what a portion is. I have no fill anymore, and I dont overfeed myself because my plate looks small or pathetic. Small amounts of food are second nature to me now. I chose it becuase although it is a "tool" you sort of have to use it whether you want to or not, as long as you have reasonable restriction. You cant decide today that you're going to eat a ton just becuase you feel like it, you have to really plan to be able to do that, eat around the band, graze all day, its much much harder to simply decide you're not going to stick with the plan today. With WW or calorie counting, you can simply not do it, with the band, you can not use it to its full potential but you cant really not use it, if that makes sense. Anyway, all I know is I could never have lost what I did without the band.

My band is unfilled and I no longer get the stuck, full sensations but I certainly dont have anything like the appetite I used to have. My mental image of a properly proportioned meal has changed, I eat slower and I simply dont need as much - my body is used to not having large portions. My band was trouble free but unfilled for a series of other surgeries.

I didnt have juice hardly at all for the entire five years I had fill in my band - cold juice, cold yogurt, ugh. I dont drink milk by the glass so I cant say. But the things that upset your band when its well restricted may appear to make no sense, but it is what it is. Oh, I could never eat ice cream either - blocked, sliming followed by painful cramps as my stomach spasmed for hours from the dold.

My worst PB ever, one that lasted several hours and nearly had me in the ER was on calamari. I used to love mussels too and I would eat oysters occasionally but those two foods are not meant to be chewed to mush! if you can taste all the various organs and bits of guts in them, they make you gag, urgh. And they're STILL often rubbery so I steered clear since I found them disgusting if chewed well. Scallops, prawns, shrimps I have no trouble with.

Its a great idea. I dont have a bento box but I operate on the same principle, in my (so far successful) attempt to keep my weight off whilst I have no fill. I make sure I have several "courses" to each meal, as I now have other dietary requirements that take priority and especially must get one or more "thickening" foods into every meal to minimise the amount my ileostomy puts out. I eat from small crockery - I have little yogurt and fruit dishes, small salad and Soup bowls and I've always eaten off small dinner plates. This helps me to get variety into my meals and make sure I'm eating well whilst I'm having chemo. I stick to three meals a day, strictly no Snacks but one or two treats whenever the occasion arises. its working so well, its actually a little TOO effective, as I've continued to drop weight and am now officially underweight. I might have to add a snack in there.

I think you do what's right for you - its not actually dangerous as long as you're not overloading your pouch - you know, eating/drinking together so that you feel utterly stuffed. For the first two years of my banded journey I drank moderately while I ate and I personally never found it washed the food through and made me hungry sooner. My band worked just fine and I lost over 100lb. However, that didnt last. When you reach a certain level of restriction, you'll probably find that anymore than a few sips will make you pb anyhow. Many's the time I've eaten something like a piece of cake, a cookie or even crackers and cheese for a snack and then not been able to drink my coffee, which is what I wanted more than food in the first place. I quickly learned to choose between snacky foods (which are no good for me anyway) and a coffee to get me through between meals. Now I have a temporary ileostomy and am having chemo so am having some problems with gut mobility and obstructions. I am instructed to drink PLENTY with food to wash it through, lol. I'm finding that the habit of not drinking and eating together was well established and is difficult to break.

I couldnt live without my vitamix blender - but its a big investment. Whilst I had restriction, it enabled me to eat enough fruit and vegies - makes great Soups, smoothies etc. Now I'm on a low residue diet to manage chemotherapy and without it, all I could eat would be white bread, rice, Pasta and Protein, again, it pulverises the fruits and vegies so that I can eat them without them causing a huge workload for my gut. I never tried baby cutlery, but by far the biggest and most effective tool I used in losing weight and in keeping it off unfilled are small dishes and plates. I have an array of them and they make portion control easy to do without weighing and measuring. For example, I buy yogurt in big tubs, because I'm feeding a family and we all eat it, but in days gone by the tub would be gone in a day. Now we serve into teeny little bowls that hold about 200 grams - the amount in an individual tub of yogurt. I find as long as I stick to 3 meals a day of proper portions, I can eat absolutely ANYTHING I fancy, and usually even a little bit of desseert, without worry about weight gain at all, so much so that I have no plans to refill my band at all.

You've got to try to turn it around so that you're the "normal" one. We just take for granted the way we use food at every celebration, to punctuate the day etc. An occasional indulgence is absolutely fine and you can and will do that again, but not right now on your pre op diet,, and you pick your occasions. Just coz everyone else eats that stuff at every occasion, doesnt make it fine - they're suffering from it - they're fat, bloated unhealthy, whatever. They ARE killing themselves eating like that, even if you cant see the evidence in their bodies. YOU are making another choice, its as simple as that. There's no "cant" about it and nothing to be sad about, you're better educated and are making better choices.

Lol, as a teacher - "baguette" and "tiramisu"!

I'm really coming to appreciate now several years down the track just what regular exercise does for your body and metabolism. I was unfilled several months ago and need to remain so for the foreseeable future and I was very worried about how much weight I would gain. It actually turns out that I cant believe how much I can eat and not gain weight these days. So my advice would be lots and lots of cardio and some strength training, which is what worked for me. But its a long term process. In the short term, I agree, try eating differently than what you are and shaking up your exercise routines.

Oh, I always looked at people that way, lol. I was always comparing. Now I dont care so much because I'm happy with myself. Watching others eat, its not judgement, its like a kind of fascination that we used to be the same. I dont "you're a disgusting person", I think "many, eating that much is digusting", its hard to put the distinction into words but it is there.

I've gone from someone you would describe as large breasted - not huge - but definitely well endowned, to someone you would definitely call small breasted. You just cant tell how much is simply fat and how much your breasts will hang onto.

Even overfilled, if you're eating super tiny little mushy meals you can get hungry very quickly - once you have tried eating normally, in your normal portion sizes, then you can judge it. For me, I've never been "too tight" but I did have fill out once for exactly this reason, I couldnt eat enough at a time to keep me satisfied.

I'm finding with an ileostomy I lose a bit more Water and during workouts, I need to have electrolytic fluids now - I buy hydralite, which is some of those special tablets you dissolve for when you've got diarrhoea or vomiting (you probably have different brandnames there), rather than gatorade or similar, which is really just pretend sugar water rubbish. Water wont cut it for me, my runs felt like I was running through waist high water, i just lacked energy so badly. I have a few of those during the day as well. So even when you're drinking plenty, it may not be enough, especially for somethign like crossfit, which is pretty demanding. A light snack is a good idea. And also, pace yourself. I too have been known to go so hard at something that I make myself sick, but you'll get more out of your workout if you just pace yourself a little below that level.

No no, you didnt only use 400 calories. You also used in the region of about 1200 (for an average weight height woman, much more for an obese person) to stay alive for the day. Blinking, breathing, your heart beating, digesting, even when you're flat out on your back in a coma your body burns quite a lot of energy. The 400 calories is extra, so is all the little movements, the pottering around, walking from couch to fridge, through the supermarket etc.

I am unfilled also and have also been amazed at the way (ferocity is a good word for it) I sometimes want to attack food. but you know what? All it takes is being mindful. Knowing what I'm eating, and how I should be eating it, I can control that. I just eat nicely, with nice manners, I know portions are ridiculous and would never DREAM of eating an entire one, even though I could. I dont eat fatty, crappy, stodgy food, I choose healthy things. Like I said, I am unfilled, I must make these decisions for myself, but having been banded, that experience is its like a big slap in the face, a big "wake up to yourself" which made me realise what I was doing to myself. Therefore I am no longer a mindless, gorging pleasure seeking eater. I know I will not die if I dont have that cookie now and I know a taste of that cookie is OK, five of them isnt. Its simply not that hard. Its a matter of not giving in to your every whim for gratification every second of the day, which is what people do because everythign we want, need or desire is right there to be bought nowadays. So people that are that self indulgent do disgust me, as a whole. However, I can feel compassion and sadness for every individual person who is obese, I do truly believe its an illness that once you've developed, you will always have. But a big component of acquiring obesity is, and i hope I dont cause a riot by saying this, a lack of self restraing, self awareness and a big case of overindulgence on the part of the sufferer and that can be quite disgusting to watch en masse.

Walking, progressing into running. Google circuit training too, there's a zillion ways to put a home circuit together. Pushups, dips, situps, I even sometimes do modified chinups and pullups on the trampoline turned upside down in the back yard (use the frame as a bar), heck, I jump on the trampoline! You could use a skipping rope too.

I've gone off cappucinos and lattes too. Here, they're not sweet like the Starbucks endless varieties (although of course we can get those too). A basic latte or cappucino is 1/3 strong espresso, 2/3 steamed milk and that's it. But since banding, I've never liked them quite so much. The milk makes me feel slightly sick. Trouble is, nowadays, when you buy coffee out, that's all you can get. McDonalds and all the coffee places used to always have filter coffee on the go day and night as well as the espresso varieties and usually when i want a coffee, its the filter coffee I want, not something super duper strong and milky. But it is nowhere anymore! Apart from the pancake Parlour. Now that i'm having chemo too, I've had to resort to buying a cup of tea!